6.4.3 hangs on "Booting the kernel"

[marlas]

I'm new to this formu, so I would like to say hello to everyone.

I'm playing with knoppix from 6.0 and everything worked fine until now.
When I try to boot 6.4, I get:

Probing EDD (edd=off to disable) ... ok
Decompressing Linux ... Parsing ELF ... done ... ok
Booting the kernel

and everytging hangs.
As i sad no problem with knoppix 6.0. and 6.2 on the same hardware.
CD with 6.4 is good - on different machine it boots with no problem.

My hardware
Laptop Asus V1V
Intel Core 2 Duo P8600
4GB Ram
Ati Radeon HD3650

[krishna.murphy]

Have you tried the self-test? - i.e.

knoppix testcd/testdvd

One can do that on an alternate machine, e.g. your mom's desktop, etc. Also - It's wise to test the integrity of the downloaded ISO (if it's not from a torrent, which is self-tested.) Look up "md5 checksum" on the web to see what's involved Finally, burning at SLOW speed is the easiest way to ensure the integrity of the final disk.

Cheers!
Krishna

[utu]

@ marlas

If krishna's suggestion doesn't solve your mystery, look at this post:

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/threads/27621-what-is-edd

and try adding 'edd=off' to your cheatcodes, as that poster did.
Then let us know if this helps.

I also get the probing message, but in my case there is no ill effect.
I have not discovered how to get the message to go away yet.

And welcome to this forum.

[utu]

Here's my solution for the cosmetic problem, that of
just getting rid of the boot phase edd message line.

I found that interrupting boot right at first with
knoppix edd=off
effectively removed the 'probing for EDD' notice.

I expected syslinux.cfg might serve as well to automate this.
I expect mods to its APPEND line was the more appropriate for kernel keywords.
I expected its DEFAULT line more appropriate for knoppix cheatcodes.
Wrong, two out of three.
Here's what worked for me, referring to the first lines of
/home/knoppix/Desktop/KNOPPIX/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg:

#DEFAULT adriane
DEFAULT knoppix edd=off
APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 lang=en vt.default_utf8=0 apm=power-off (etcetera)
TIMEOUT 100

edd=off didn't work for me at either end of the APPEND line.

I don't know if this solution will get around the more objectionable
cases of not booting at all or booting with unnecessary delays.
I'd like to hear, either way.

[marlas]

I found knoppix version 6.4.4 on repos.
I downloaded and .... it works.

[utu]

Based on don999's idea at

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/threads...tcodes-instead,

it may be worth a try to dictate the location of KNOPPIX in this way, if you know it,
and EVEN if that location is not necessarily an hdd, such as /dev/sdb1, the location of a LiveUSB.

You can test this at the command line, and if it helps,
you can add it by modifying the previous DEFAULT suggestion to

DEFAULT edd=off fromhd=/dev/sdb1.

This is unnecesary in my case, surely redundant, but I've not observed any ill effects.

I'm working toward a single (hopefully simple) work-around that does the following:
1--Removes an unnecessary comment 'Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)', where it's not needed;
2--Removes as well an unnecessary delay which is not needed; and
3--Supplies the device designation to boot-with, when needed.

It would be nice if this work-around didn't create any new problems.

For the hopelessly curious, this 'EDD problem' of Knoppix 6.4 seems
just to be our current manifestation of a persistent linux problem
going back many years. One usually characterized as the sometime
failure of automatic linux installation processes to correctly deduce
the device designation linux needs to boot properly.

Ubuntu experience on this problem goes back to at least 2004.
IMO, the attempt to use of EDD to help solve the the device assignment
problem may in some ways have made the problem more ubiquitous.
Compounded by the facts that some of us HAVE it and some don't,
and some of us NEED it, and some don't.

See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...grub/+bug/8497.

[utu]

@ marlas

Glad your problem went away. How do you explain that?
Are there really any Knoppix 6.4 cases of 'won't boot at all'?
Most distros have this as THE case of interest, understandably.

@ anyone

I'm interested in whether fromhd=/dev/sdb1 would work, sdb1 not
being an hdd.

Also interested if anyone can give a concrete example, not in
shorthand, using the cheatcode knoppix_dir=/path/to/KNOPPIX/Directory,
which I take to be shorthand by a much more experienced person
than myself.

[krishna.murphy]

I'm interested in whether fromhd=/dev/sdb1 would work, sdb1 not
being an hdd.

Yep, that works fine (assuming sdb1 is in fact the correct designation for your e.g. flash drive.)

Cheers!

Krishna

[ICPUG]

utu

Here is an example of real usage of knoppix_dir in the menu.lst file used with grub bootloader

title Knoppix 4.0.2
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/knoppix.402/linux ramdisk_size=100000
fromhd=/dev/hda1
knoppix_dir=/boot/knoppix.402 knoppix_name=KNOPPIX
init=/etc/init lang=uk nomce dma
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/knoppix.402/minirt.gz
boot

The version of Knoppix is a bit old but the same applies today.

I copy the KNOPPIX, linux, minirt.gz files from the Live CD to the following directory on my hard disk 1st partition:
/boot/knoppix.402

This is a 'poor man's' install (on a FAT32 partition).

[utu]

So, where are we?

I think my post #6 may be a reasonable workaround for the problem
which named this thread, plus a few lesser annoyances.

marlas' miraculous self-cure muddies the picture. It now appears
noone is apparently complaining of the BIG problem, not booting.

The Ubuntu record on their bug 8497 makes me believe we've just not
YET recorded a truly valid case where 'Knoppix 6.4 hangs on boot',
and where EDD might have something to do with that.

Klaus K. does not like the edd=off idea other than as a workaround,
since he expects EDD may do more good than harm in most installs.
(my interpretation of brief comments of his on the matter)

Thanks to other posters, there are apparently several cheatcodes
that might help some Knoppix installs find what they need to boot.